So, here's some things that magically never seem to make it into the bookkeeping:
- We were at war with an enemy that actually felt credible. The Reds had nukes, invaded countries, and could have (as both sides nearly did) brought about the fiery death of the world.
- Not only was this threat credible, the government did useful things to protect its citizens: Civil Defense stockpiles and training, school drills and films that educated, and so on. Our current .gov is willfully ineffective.
- Healthcare was much more affordable, as basic care was cheaper and not being eaten alive by soulless administrators with fuckoff-huge budgets in a non-profit dickwaving contest. Resistant strains of bacteria weren't as widespread. Insurance and malpractice was not as big a deal.
- Not only was healthcare cheaper, there was not as much science as we have today invested in feeding us shit food that tastes great and has no redeeming nutritional value. There wasn't a McDonald's or Starbucks on every corner.
- The prison-industrial complex was not as embedded as it is today, nor were police as militarized.
- You could get a good-paying job doing vocational work, and even receive useful training for it at school. You might even get a good pension. Neither companies nor unions had screwed everything up yet.
- You didn't have to worry about your job being trivially outsourced, as international shipping hadn't quite gotten together just yet.
- You didn't have to worry about being bombarded with advertising target directly at you every day from every appliance, because the 'net wasn't around, nor was Facebook.
- My alma mater had free tuition for the first half of the 60s. :|
- Ma Bell had a competent government-sanctioned monopoly, instead of the patchwork fiefdoms from the 80s and 90s.
- We put a man on the fucking moon, instead of ads in the browser.
~
So, uh, yeah. There were downsides to be sure--I'd probably be running some ENIAC derivative or working at NASA (given my skillset) doing server monkey work right now, I'd to write weird programs for weird machines in weird languages, I'd have been bullied more growing up, and if certain classes of accidents happened I'd be shit out of luck.
If I were not white, male, or straight I could expect more trouble; then again, I'd probably have a more close-knit community to help me with those problems.
I'll leave speculation on dating and gender relations for some other thread and time.
All the same, I bet I could raise a family more healthily and more easily, and with greater (if perhaps more false) confidence that Things Would Be Alright.
For sure, I think that there are problems today - I was just mentioning things that are never said in these diatribes. I definitely agree that the prison system is a new and significant problem in the US. I definitely disagree that the war on terror is worse because the enemy is nebulous. I'll leave it there because I could write pages and pages of crap about the ups and downs of this stuff :)
- We were at war with an enemy that actually felt credible. The Reds had nukes, invaded countries, and could have (as both sides nearly did) brought about the fiery death of the world.
- Not only was this threat credible, the government did useful things to protect its citizens: Civil Defense stockpiles and training, school drills and films that educated, and so on. Our current .gov is willfully ineffective.
- Healthcare was much more affordable, as basic care was cheaper and not being eaten alive by soulless administrators with fuckoff-huge budgets in a non-profit dickwaving contest. Resistant strains of bacteria weren't as widespread. Insurance and malpractice was not as big a deal.
- Not only was healthcare cheaper, there was not as much science as we have today invested in feeding us shit food that tastes great and has no redeeming nutritional value. There wasn't a McDonald's or Starbucks on every corner.
- The prison-industrial complex was not as embedded as it is today, nor were police as militarized.
- You could get a good-paying job doing vocational work, and even receive useful training for it at school. You might even get a good pension. Neither companies nor unions had screwed everything up yet.
- You didn't have to worry about your job being trivially outsourced, as international shipping hadn't quite gotten together just yet.
- You didn't have to worry about being bombarded with advertising target directly at you every day from every appliance, because the 'net wasn't around, nor was Facebook.
- My alma mater had free tuition for the first half of the 60s. :|
- Ma Bell had a competent government-sanctioned monopoly, instead of the patchwork fiefdoms from the 80s and 90s.
- We put a man on the fucking moon, instead of ads in the browser.
~
So, uh, yeah. There were downsides to be sure--I'd probably be running some ENIAC derivative or working at NASA (given my skillset) doing server monkey work right now, I'd to write weird programs for weird machines in weird languages, I'd have been bullied more growing up, and if certain classes of accidents happened I'd be shit out of luck.
If I were not white, male, or straight I could expect more trouble; then again, I'd probably have a more close-knit community to help me with those problems.
I'll leave speculation on dating and gender relations for some other thread and time.
All the same, I bet I could raise a family more healthily and more easily, and with greater (if perhaps more false) confidence that Things Would Be Alright.